You can do whatever you want if you keep the people scared
Feb 19, 2023 1:28:45 GMT
Mystie, Montannie, and 6 more like this
Post by aj2hall on Feb 19, 2023 1:28:45 GMT
“You can do whatever you want if you keep the people frightened enough.”
I read this in an opinion today on gun violence by Reagan's daughter and it really resonated with me. I think you could expand gun violence to include immigrants, crime in the cities, CRT in schools, transgender people, drag shows, weather balloons, China and other Republican targets and there is the Republican strategy in a nutshell. Scare people enough until our democracy disappears and we have an autocracy or maybe an oligarchy run by wealthy, privileged old white men.
www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/opinion/guns-highland-park-ronald-reagan.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Years ago, someone quoted to me a statement they attributed — probably apocryphally — to the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The quote was, “You can do whatever you want if you keep the people frightened enough.” There are people in America who know this and are counting on it. And to have a country in which everyone is scared of who might be legally carrying a gun as they walk through their daily lives means we have a weakened country in which anything is possible. Fear is a breeding ground for autocracy, and history shows us that every democracy that has crumbled did so in an atmosphere of fear.
Democracy thrives when citizens feel emboldened by their country, when they feel confident in their freedoms and in a government that exists to make their lives safer, not more at risk. Democracy dies in the dark waters of fear, and that’s where we are — swimming for our lives, wondering why a strident minority wants us to drown.
I read this in an opinion today on gun violence by Reagan's daughter and it really resonated with me. I think you could expand gun violence to include immigrants, crime in the cities, CRT in schools, transgender people, drag shows, weather balloons, China and other Republican targets and there is the Republican strategy in a nutshell. Scare people enough until our democracy disappears and we have an autocracy or maybe an oligarchy run by wealthy, privileged old white men.
www.nytimes.com/2022/07/05/opinion/guns-highland-park-ronald-reagan.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Years ago, someone quoted to me a statement they attributed — probably apocryphally — to the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The quote was, “You can do whatever you want if you keep the people frightened enough.” There are people in America who know this and are counting on it. And to have a country in which everyone is scared of who might be legally carrying a gun as they walk through their daily lives means we have a weakened country in which anything is possible. Fear is a breeding ground for autocracy, and history shows us that every democracy that has crumbled did so in an atmosphere of fear.
Democracy thrives when citizens feel emboldened by their country, when they feel confident in their freedoms and in a government that exists to make their lives safer, not more at risk. Democracy dies in the dark waters of fear, and that’s where we are — swimming for our lives, wondering why a strident minority wants us to drown.